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mu22le writes "Enlightenment, the daring window manager that disappeared from our collective radar years ago, is back to bring Ubuntu to ARM. The bet that E developers made years ago to neglect 3D, compositing, and make a fast and versatile 2.5d engine may have finally paid off. The current popularity of ARM-based devices could be a niche that the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries can fill comfortably."

I'm happy to see Enlightenment getting some more exposure. I may have to dust it off and take the latest version out for a spin again. I've been using XFCE for a year now and it's high time for an arbitrary switch to a new DE.

I am running Illume (a version of Enlightenment) on my openmoko and developing applications [glitch.tl] for it. It took me a while to get going because many of the example applications are out of date and the APIs change quite fast. It doesn't help that documentation is either hard to find or non-existent. The toolkits are vulnerable to buffer overflows as well. Sometimes it is best just to stay off the heap while Elementary is starting up.

But once I got a few applications working I found enlightenment quite conducive

The latest stable version is still E16. E17 has been in development for longer than I can remember. However, the SVN snapshots of E17 (like 16.9999 or something similar) have been reported to be useful. I haven't run E in quite a long time, though, so I can't say for sure.

For each and every hardware that catches up and gives you $n hours of battery life there will always be hardware that chooses to not catch up, and as result gives you 2*$n hours of battery life.

Personally, I disable animations on every computer I use just because they are wasting my time. 3D effects are nice for a few minutes, but become irrelevant after that. The important part of a window is not its decorations, it's the client area.

Animation can add another level of context to the user interface. For instance, status messages with fading background colors (made popular by 37Signals with their Yellow-Fade Technique [37signals.com])--that's animation, but it's used subtly, sparingly and appropriately, so it gets a pass.

The places where it is simply unforgivable to use animation is in scroll effects, form fields or menu items. I always end up using nLite [nliteos.com] when I reinstall an operating system because it lets you create new installs that have all that CR

Your comment would make sense if EFL/E17 did not already support OpenGL ES on embedded devices. Illume, the E17 variant designed for mobile/embedded devices, already runs quite well with hardware/OpenGL acceleration on platforms like Maemo, and I already have built and successfully run EFL-based OpenGL apps on the Palm Pre (available in the WebOS Internals WIDK tree [webos-internals.org]).

Evas was designed from the ground up to be modular and support every graphics platform known to man. Windows GDI, DirectX, iPhone OS, X11, WebOS, native Linux Framebuffer, SDL, OpenGL, OpenGL ES - you name it, EFL runs on it. Evas will take advantage of hardware acceleration when it is available, but benchmarks actually show that in many instances, when it comes to regular UI graphics operations, OpenGL/hardware accelerated interfaces don't necessarily perform better than Evas' own software engine and in several cases are actually worse -- on the Palm Pre, for example, GLES is actually much slower at doing things like alpha blending. So in that respect, yes, hardware does have some catching up to do.

OpenGL/hardware accelerated interfaces don't necessarily perform better than Evas' own software engine and in several cases are actually worse

That greatly depends on your definition of "better". The whole point of offloading those operations to the graphics accelerator is so the main CPU isn't bogged down performing those operations. On a mobile platform, that may make the difference when it comes to battery life, as it's possible the graphics chipset can perform those operations more efficiently (if not

It's no secret that Maemo isn't exactly allowing the N900 to spread it's wings - perhaps having other OS options such as Ubuntu would let more developers in the door. I know Maemo's Debian base isn't exactly an alienating factor for developers but, given Ubuntu's current prevalence, it opens a few more doors competition-wise.

Would be somewhat indicting of Nokia's choice of OS should an alternative, indepdent platform take off though!

But it's irrelevant anyway, considering that Maemo doesn't exist anymore: it's been merged with Moblin to create the new "MeeGo" distribution, which will be RPM-based and completely independent from any "parent" distro.

I've tried several times to "move on" to the next WM, be it compiz or e17, or maybe even lxde, but I keep coming back to e16 because, well, it works. It's the only compositing WM I know that updates the pager with the actual contents of the screen using, well, compositing (compiz doesn't really have a pager, and awn, gnome-panel, etc. use polling instead of compositing). Compiz is nice, but still crashes often and unexpectedly, and still runs noticeably slower even when I have most of the plugins turned o

There is no GUI option to change the font size in Enlightenment but there is a way to change the font size; it involves editing config files [soft32.com]. Although I should point out that Enlightenment puts a higher focus on having a light footprint than usability, it just doesn't seem to take it as far as Fluxbox does.

I take it that you've never really used terminal commands much. Alt-Ctrl-Insert launches Eterm which you can then edit the relevant text files using nano, vi or whatever editor is your preference. If you do it right, it is possible to do all of this without the monitor even functioning let alone some small text. But yes it is somewhat of a pain in the arse for users not accustomed to working in a terminal by text commands alone.

No but my point is that editing a text file without being able to read the font used in the menus isn't the impossible task you seem to think it is. Everything you need to do the job has a shortcut for it. Opening a terminal, launching Nano, editing and saving said config files all can be done with text commands and keyboard shortcuts.

I should point out that Enlightenment puts a higher focus on having a light footprint than usability...

Funny you should say that - back in ~'97 or so I used to use Enlightenment as a WM with Gnome. In those days we all thought of it as a big badass resource-hungry monster. I never did get the hang of using Enlightenment as a full desktop environment, however. I have no problem with editing config files, but I never bothered spending the time learning how to get applications launched. Sort of defeats the

The fonts should be perfectly readable so long as your screen informs X of its physical dimensions, so X can work out the appropriate DPI setting...Infact, the text should then be the same physical size regardless of resolution or screen size. The problem is that some laptop panels don't do this, so X cannot work out the DPI and uses a default, a default which is usable but not ideal for typical size CRT screens but unsuitable for very small netbook screens.

E17 doesn't give you the option to do that without going into the config files and manually editing them. It's not something that is any problem for more experienced Linux users but it is the kind of thing that may hurt adoption of E-17 Ubuntu.

Where did you get this information from? GTK/Qt apps are guided by GTK/Qt DPI settings (there should be something for that - E has a DPI control, but I'm not sure what it does), but E has pretty good font-size management (for stuff like menus, titlebars etc), right in the System Settings -> Appearance -> Font tab. You just need to use a snapshot which is not ancient.

I'd imagine near-future ARMS device would be like somewhere from smart phone to netbook for which the manufacture/carrier/vendor would just change it to some sensible default setting.

TFA says they are doing this mostly because of ARMs video licensing problem. Still, kudo's to Ubuntu for recognizing that on a netbook a good 2D experience is more important than a full fetched 3D experiment . My Atom netbook, while runs compiz smoothly, currently uses awesome. On a small screen, you are probably going to ha

Yeah, it strikes me as funny and sad that a comment on this site, which is supposedly a tech site that focuses a lot on linux, are so clueless that they are modding comments that are based on information that are at least three years out of date as insightful. Here's [enlightenment.org] an image showing the configuration dialog on e17 that clearly shows a "fonts" category, using the old antiquated bling theme no less. Here's [enlightenment.org] the svn repo. that shows that the fonts configuration is at least 3 years old. That isn't even when

I've been running the E17 DR since ~2005 and that hasn't been true for quite some time. You do not need to edit config files, and in fact when you install E17 the first time it even has an option for a GUI specifically designed for Netbooks. Maybe the Ubuntu version is just broken.

Only if the only other major players are Windows 7 and Vista. KDE, too, perhaps (although that's debatable), but then you'd also have to count Gnome as another major player, and Gnome is certainly far more "conservative in appearance", in every possible sense of the phrase, than Mac OS X.

Yeah, except not really. Try Gnome, Xfce or LXDE's default desktops, while KDE and Enlightenment may have chosen to follow in Windows' garish footsteps there's still plenty of desktops more conservative than Apple's. And hardware? one word: Lenovo.

but when more effort is spent on making a UI pretty as opposed to functional, then the whole point of the exercise has been lost.

er you're missing the point with your trenchant views!! Quite often Pretty = Functional. When someone spends time on making a UI look nice they are often making it more usable too, either by design or by accident.

No. The big icon bar at the bottom is a major waste of space. I read here on/. that even Apple's UI guru wanted to get rid of it, but they kept it because it looked so good in the store.

Anyhooo, I guess the issue is not only about default settings, but also about how easily you can change them. I can tweak stuff easily in Windows (but that's 'coz I'm used to it, and not afraid to look around). I haven't found MacOS easier to tweak than Windows, just different enough to be hard to grasp. And Linux is a bit

(Or if you don;t know the keyboard command, go to System Preferences, click on "Dock" and tick the box that says "automatically hide and show the dock" - you can also tun off the animation here if you like, and change the size of the Dock itself, its position on the screen and whether it magnifies when you hover over it)

It's pretty intuitive really - all of the UI options are in System Prefs. Even better, the help box on that app responds to the Windows keywords for what you are changing. For example, if you type in "Wallpaper" it highlights the Desktop and Screensaver icon, and indicates that on Mac OS X that is called "Desktop Picture". So, if you have found it hard to use, you must not have read the little intro thing Apple produced which mentions this. (I just tried it - it is still working in 10.6).

I know a few people who keep their Dock on the left side of their screen because the display is wider than it is tall and they like it over on that side. Can you put the start menu/toolbar thing on the sides of the screen in Vista? I know you can change the size of it, but I haven't been in front of a Windows box since XP.

Better yet, I not only shrink them, but convert those cartoony icons to their tasteful text equivalents (courtesy of Laurent Baumann). That way, Jack Bauer will ask *me* for the terrorist's IP address, with my why-so-serious desktop with hardly any eye-candy and plain gray wall, instead of asking the pretty hawt little co-worker with her waay too colorful fisher price icons and aquarium screensaver. BTW, Jack, it's 127.0.0.1./me leans back in chair, convinced of a job well-done

You are an experienced Linux user and you think you need to edit config files to change setting in your GUI? It has not occurred to you to try using Gnome, KDE, LXDE, XFCE, ICE WM or numerous others that let you change settings from the GUI - have never edited a config file to change a KDE setting, and my desktop is very far from the defaults.

E17 is what runs on this hardware. I'm sure that if Gnome or KDE could run on it they'd base the ARM customized Ubuntu distro to use one of them instead. Problem is that Gnome and KDE use more resources than E17 does and E17 just doesn't have a GUI for changing certain settings. E17 isn't aiming to compete in the same areas that Gnome and KDE are. E17 is primarily used where computer resources are limited while Gnome and KDE are generally used on systems where computer resources aren't the major problem

The elephant in the room is that the only reason that anyone is considering E17 is that there are no proper drivers for the hardware. The current generation of ARM SoCs that are being used for this kind of application all come with a GPU that can handle OpenGL ES 2.0. That means that they have a fully programmable pipeline and are massively overpowered for running something like Compiz. With proper drivers, they could handle pretty much any effects that you wanted to throw at them, including things like ripple effects (which require pixel shaders).

E17 doesn't use 3D acceleration, so it suddenly has an advantage when you are on a platform with missing 3D drivers. Add 3D drivers, and suddenly E17 is using the CPU while everything else is using the GPU, and E17 will be dumped because it gives you less battery life.

Um, excuse me? What SoC are you talking about? With some simple googling, here's two videos - 1 [youtube.com], 2 [youtube.com] - showing 3D demos running on the OMAP3-powered Beagle Board. The linked news item (TFA) even mentions an OpenGL ES 'engine' for Evas [enlightenment.org] being contributed by Samsung. 3D drivers are certainly available for the PowerVR GPU in the OMAP3 (albeit binary-only), and Enlightenment would seem to be able to use 3D acceleration.

the elephant in the room is that e17's libraries (efl) have been using full accelerated pipelines like opengl to render years before gnome or kde did... maybe you never saw the original evas gl rendering demos... all hidden behind a canvas api that rendered any way you like... the engine got revamped recently thanks to samsung for opengl-es2.0... not just opengl (full opengl).

(note - ubuntu's problem is the lack of ability to ship the binary-only powervr opengl drivers themseleves - thus their hands are tie

Before saying anything, you should perhaps get some real information. E17 use Evas to handle the graphics canvas and Evas does provide tons of different backend. OpenGL ES is one of them. E17 is the only window manager that can scale from hardware without any GPU, to hardware with just a blitter or hardware with full Open GL.

And in all of this scenario, it is highly optimised. My bet that at a graphic equivalent result, you will use less ressource with E17 than with any other WM. Oh, and E17 is the only WM

"E17 just doesn't have a GUI for changing certain settings"... Umm, what settings would those be ?? Have you even tried it lately ? There are gui configs for pretty much everything. Please, check the facts before posting misinformation

in e17 there is a wonderful full complete ui scaling factor - u can ask it to be automatically adjusted from dpi - if x dpi is right, or just slide the slider to where you like it... so moot for 17 - not to mention a font config dialog when themes support textclasses...

Good luck with that. I'm an experienced Linux user and I got a mac. Used MacOS for three months exclusively... never could get used to it. The thing is MacOS is designed to be intuitive, but not user friendly.

The thing is you don't have to tinker with configuration files in linux. Yes its there, but you don't have to do it. Have you actually tried just using the default Ubuntu install and not messing around with GUI settings? It's actually quite nice. The problem is you've gotten used to doing things a diff

I'm an experienced Linux user and I got a mac. Used MacOS for three months exclusively... never could get used to it.

It doesn't appear that you put any effort into it.

All MacOS does is remove the configuration options. So it forces you to get used it.

On the contrary, it lets you get straight to work, and when you run into specific Many of them, yes. None of your examples captures this notion. There are certain brick walls that you do have to get used to, but there are many layers of customization possible in almost everything. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single thing that I absolutely can't do from the OS X desktop that I can on Ubuntu.

Only if you move them. The Exposé sequence is based on the position of the windows on your desktop. It's not random. If none of your windows move, the order won't change.

Unless a window has opened or closed. If you now have an odd number of windows, then there is a significant chance that all of your windows have moved. If you now have an even number of windows, then at least the apps on the last line have moved.

You could always try clicking on the application's icon in the Dock, which is always on the screen (unless you move it). Those icons don't move, either, unless you move them.

Uh, the Dock is a gigantic failure in UI because it expands and contracts as new icons appear, representing new windows. Only if all the apps you use are pinned will the dock begin to work as you suggest, but every time you connect a removable device, insert a CD, or experience a popup window from the OS, everything in the Dock moves. So you are lying...

Just like Exposé windows.

Yes, just like you lied about those.

In MacOS I can cut and paste files to move them to a new folder.

I assume you mean can't. With good reason: it breaks the metaphor. When you cut text and fail to paste it, it disappears.

Linux with Compiz presents a superior interface to OSX because it does all the stuff OSX does but better and more configurable. I disabled my gnome-panel and use avant-window-navigator from the AWN testing team PPA, and I use compiz' hot corners to give me a live mipmapped view of my four virtual desktops in one corner, and to line up all my windows (again, mipmapped and nice and smooth) when I mouse to the other corner. And I get to retain all the keyboard-controlled goodness at the same time. OSX has somewhat smoother animations since Xgl was canned, and while we wait for a replacement to not suck, but I don't need the magic lamp effect to my dock. It is kind of nice, though, and I miss it a little. So I'll give OSX one consolation point.

Don't pretend that OSX's lack of configurability is an asset. It is not. Having one default behavior is valuable, but preventing choice is not a benefit to the user. It is a benefit to the company. And when people see my Compiz desktop, they start throwing rocks at actual macs. Of course, to be fair, when people see iLife, they start throwing rocks at Linux... but that's not because of the OS GUI.

You can always tell when a troll moderates, because they moderate something which is not a troll as a troll. I have extensive personal experience customizing GUIs beginning with the Amiga, MacOS 6 (using resedit), MacOS 7 (resedit, Copland interface INIT), various Windows versions, And hell, even numerous versions of Enlightenment. I've been whacking Linux GUIs around since Slackware 2 and FVWM 1.2x. I also used OSX 10.1 through 10.4... and I'm intimately familiar with the strengths and utter failures of ea

I'm with you, man. Nobody else has problems with cut and paste files, just the Mac. It breaks the metaphor, but so does dozens of other things they've done to add glitz over the years. (btw, select, drag, hold down the apple key and release mouse button to cut and paste across file systems.) I am used to the OS X user interface, but it took me YEARS to get used to it. There are still things I find annoying. I am not sure what to say on the Expose thing. I can hit f9 over and over and the windows will NOT ti

It took me more than 3 years to really start warming up to linux. The command line isn't as powerful as it could be until you realize how you can string things together in shell scripts and really start taking advantage of it.

Under MacOS I have to push the F9, watch the pretty expose animation look around the screen, and then click on the app I want. Every time I push F9 apps are in a different spot. Under Ubuntu I just click on the item in the taskbar which is always on the screen and the task is always in the same spot (unless I reorder it by dragging it to a different spot in the taskbar). In MacOS I can cut and paste files to move them to a new folder. I can't set keyboard shortcuts to change songs in iTunes, I have to use the little remote control (which I've lost). etc, etc.

Yes, there was life before expose appeared on the Mac. I never use expose on Macs because there are other options that I have grown familiar with that work better for me because I am more organized. When you discover option-click, your life changes. Option click outside of an appli

Command+Tab and Command+~ are the shortcuts you are looking for. No need to use Exposé - I am a pretty hardcore Mac user and I very rarely ever use it. Only really ever use the "show Desktop" command so I can grab a file and drop it onto an open app. I don't switch apps or windows with Exposé.

On the specific laptops they put an icon on the key if they have moved the location - on the bluetooth KB they put the exposé and dashboard keys over on F3,4,5, but you can change it easily in the system prefs to whatever key combo you need.

The Adobe and Quark apps have always been a bit problematic with shortcuts. The apps themselves have so many, they always seem to clash. What I hate about the Adobe CS suite is that they block the system key combos that clash - for example Command+H is hide app in *

Editing text config files is common for fluxbox and E17 but Gnome, XFCE and KDE rarely if ever require config file editing to change settings. I would imagine that is a large part of why they are far far more popular than E17 and Fluxbox. People could dig into the config files if they have to but I agree that it's just a "frak it! no more fiddling!" moment for most people.

So what can we do about the 3D graphics licensing issue? Legally not very much. The companies that own the IP (Intellectual Property) rights to these drivers often want large licensing fees for their technology. This is a model for single product lines (take the Nokia N900 for instance) but for Ubuntu where we are targeting a more broad approach, this isn't ideal.

If your spellchucker is a wizard, the mistake will probably get noticed - Intelligence is the prime stat for a wizard.If your spellchucker is a sorcerer, lots of mistakes will get by, because Charisma isn't good for noticing that sort of thing.